The Secretly Cool Thing About Being a Mom

Get a kid.

Now let that kid get to be, oh, about six years old.

Get yerself a raging, phegmmy cold, complete with leaky eyes and hacking up bits of yer lung, a slight fever and, oh yeah, PMS.

Got it?

Okay, now accidentally breathe on or kiss the six-year old kid.

Feel really bad about making your child sick.

The next day, you will have the perfect excuse for napping.

"I'm sick, and so is my child."

Girl-child and I cuddled on the couch most of Sunday afternoon, watching "The Electric Company" * episodes, and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory"**, drinking ginger ale, and petting the occasionally-in-the-room backside of our fluffy cat.

Girl-child had my cough, my leaky eyes, my ennui.

We were quite a snotty pair.

Girl-child didn't want to sleep.
I did.
I didn't beg, but I came awfully close.
Finally, I stretched out on the couch with my head uncomfortably resting on the curvy arm of the thing, on my right side, closed my eyes, and said, "Momma's gonna nap now."

It must have been, oh two minutes later, when I felt Girl-child move. She lay her warm body over my top leg, and rested her head on my hip (hoorah for cushiony hips). She pulled the blanket from underneath my foot and wrapped it around her body. Next thing I knew, she was snoring.

So what the hell, I snored too.

We slept through the rest of the movie, through the end credits, and I came to from my cold-induced coma long enough to hit 'Stop' on the clicker, whereupon I fell into cold-coma again, and didn't wake up til time to start dinner.

The Secretly Cool Thing About Being a Mom is that sometimes, when you and your little one are under the weather, you can cuddle all afternoon and not care that the tub really needs cleaning, and the bills need paying, and you really should ride that exercise bike, dammit.

If I don't feel better today, and Girl-child is in a "Bard's Tale" battle with said cold germs, we may stay home and cuddle some more, drippy and feverish and ginger-aled.


* "The Best of the Electric Company" is on DVD. Get it...NOW!

** I was skeptical about Tim Burton remaking "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" because I loved the original. Yes. I had a 'thing' for the boy who played Charlie (who's now an animal vet), and Gene Wilder was god-like. But. However. I saw "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory"...and loved it. True to the book (Charlie DOES have a dad, dammit!), Johnny Depp in creepy-Michael-Jackson-ish mode, and with Danny Elfman's music/singing, oh yeah, this is a classic, folks. Plus, how can you go wrong with an actor named "Deep Roy"...and it's not even porn!